Building resilience amidst a crisis: An automaker’s procurement journey to secure semiconductor supply

SummaryEvents such as the semiconductors shortage crisis of 2020 and 2023 caused severe shortages across different industries. This specific crisis forced automakers to take several measures to secure supplies and highlighted the need for resilience. With procurement as the core function to manage supply, this study investigates how procurement contributes to building supply chain resilience during high-impact and long-lasting disruptions. Drawing on the adaptive cycle perspective of resilience, we investigate how procurement supports persistence, adaptation, and transformation in response to disruption. Using in-depth data from a case of a commercial vehicle Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM), we follow the procurement measures across the phases of the semiconductor crisis. The findings show that procurement not only enables operational continuity through internal coordination and external information flows, but also facilitates strategic adaptation by reconfiguring processes and relationships. Most notably, procurement drives transformation of a firm’s supply chain management by institutionalizing new roles internally and redefining its role in the supply network. A conceptual framework is proposed that links procurement to changes in supply chain potential and connectedness, offering new insights into procurement’s role for resilience across the adaptive cycle.